Still a little out of it from how deeply he slept, Alec looked around a little when he woke up. The surroundings were too familiar for him not to know where he was or what he was doing.

With a sigh, he got started—

'What's this…?' He frowned, looking at the severed arm on the workbench. Slowly, with an uncomfortable feeling in his stomach, he turned around.

It was like he had guessed. Monster Milo had lost an arm.

Milo was undoubtedly a monster. He wouldn't suffer from losing an arm.

Alec still didn't like the idea of picking him apart for his research.

But what could he do when Moira had done it for him?

Alec stopped hesitating and cast Scan 2. Figuring out a solution was more important than getting hung up on how he felt about using a corpse for his research.

'DaVinci dug up and studied corpses, didn't he? This is basically the same.'

One could argue that the situation was different and that it was audacious of Alec to compare himself to DaVinci, but Alec didn't care. He was more concerned about why Scan 2 didn't work on Milo's severed arm.

He had tried to use Scan 1 on dead monsters before without much luck. He had thought it was because the different physiques of monsters rendered Scan 1 useless. It should not have done the same to Scan 2. Apparently, he was wrong.

Milo's arm rejected his spell just like how Milo had rejected Sleep before.

'What the shit?' Alec frowned.

He hadn't noticed monsters being able to ignore magic before. Was it just Milo? Or was it the same for all human monsters?

Or maybe he just hadn't tried to put other monsters to sleep before.

For the sake of science, Alec fired a Pebbleshot at Milo's arm. Since he needed to compare it to when he fired it at monsters in the wild, he didn't hold back. He pierced straight through Milo's hand and cracked the table beneath.

'Hmm. Interesting.'

It seemed monsters had an innate resistance to magic influence. Technically, Pebbleshot was magic. But it was as close to a physical attack as magic could get, so the monsters couldn't ignore it like they did Scan 2 and Sleep.

'Or maybe…?'

Alec tried lowering the output on Pebbleshot and fired it again.

It bounced off Milo's arm.

'I'm not sure what I was expecting.'

Since that wasn't conclusive, Alec tried other spells with varying output.

His hypothesis wasn't wrong. The more magic a spell was, the more powerful it needed to be to ignore the monster flesh's magic resistance.

For spells like Scan 2 and Sleep, that meant he had to make them very powerful. That would take a lot of mana.

'I need a second circle.' Alec had started to feel that he couldn't use a lot of the magic he wanted to use before he ran out of mana. Since he would die if he did not have any mana left in his magic circle, he had to be pretty prudent.

'I just need to figure out the pressure.'

Another magic circle would affect the Heartguard. He had to calculate where and how to put it to make sure his heart didn't burst.

'Later.'

He would just have to focus on condensing his mana whenever he ran out. Fortunately, increasing his Intelligence stat had made that easier. The Poem of Neverlasting Wisdom also made the Aether in the air clearer every time he used it.

It didn't take long for him to recover his mana after he used it.

So, he didn't hold back. He reconfigured Scan 2's Regulator to draw enough mana. He also altered the Frame a little to make the spell more intrusive and effective at penetrating the innate resistance.

'Wait a minute. Is this like my Resistance stat?' Alec asked.

[Yes.] Was the System's succinct answer. Alec was satisfied with that. It gave him a much clearer idea of what that Stat did. Now, he had a pretty decent understanding of all of his stats.

So, while waiting for his mana to recover, he decided to take a look.

[Alec Lanterns]

[Magic Pioneer I - Reacher - Stopwatcher] (New*2)

[Stats:

[Strength -Wood]

[Dexterity - Mud]

[Agility - Wood]

[Durability - Wood]

[Resistance - Stone] (Up!)

[Intelligence - Stone] (Up!)

[Energy - Wood]

[Skill Energy - Stone] (Up!)

[Skills:

[Reader]

[Appraisal]

[Sovereign of Time's Blessing] (New!)

[Seed of ???

[Registered Keywords:

[???????????]

[???????????]

[?????????????]

[????????]

[???????]

[????? ?????? ????:

[Wrath]*

[?????]

[????]

[????]

[?????]

[?????]

[Gluttony]

'Oho? Mhm. Oh-hoh?! Ohh…'

Alec's reactions were mixed as he looked at the status window. Two new titles. That was good. He could already guess that Stopwatcher reduced skill energy consumption while stopping time. Reacher…

[Reacher. One who reaches for the sky. Become stronger when facing foes more powerful than you.]

'I guess that's because I fought and killed the snake that was at least two stages above me.' He hadn't defeated the snake personally, but he had contributed slightly. More importantly, that wasn't the title. The title was that he became stronger when facing stronger foes.

'Very handy. Next is…' He skipped the stats and headed straight for the new skill.

[Sovereign of Time's Blessing.

[Pride, the ruler of Time, has given you their blessing, granting you immunity to the repercussions of interfering with the flow of time. 'Use it well.']

'Hmm?!' Alec read through it quickly before going back to the first word of the description.

'It could be their name.' Alec had heard of people being called that. It was unusual, but nothing new.

However…

'I doubt it's that.'

He had to meet the Sovereign of Time again.

He had to become a King.

'...Whatever that means.'

Alec sighed. For some reason, he didn't think it would be as easy as donning a crown or taking the seat of a throne.

But it was a matter for the future. He had a lot to do before that, including figuring out how to handle his Seven Deadly Sins, especially now that he had awoken Wrath.

'Shit.'

Alec cursed before catching himself. Now that he had Wrath, he had to be extra careful about his mood and make sure he did not succumb to the mind-melting rage that overtook him when he attacked Shim.

He did not like losing control like that.

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